out to find my tap, then sought loneliness. With Wyatt gone, unreachable, untouchable, it wasn’t hard. The emotion flooded me, bordering on grief, and the Break snapped all around me. Around us. Someone shouted as we dissolved. I guided us through the familiar crackle of energy, toward the road just past the gate. A sharp stab of pain hit between my eyes. Warm wetness stained my upper lip.
And then we were out. Milo caught me before I fell, and I sagged against his chest, dizzy and nauseated.
“Holy shit, that was awesome,” either Greg or Scott said. The other asked, “She okay?”
A high-pitched shriek bounced off the trees from the direction of Boot Camp. “Go!” I said, and pushed Milo away.
The three took off down the road and disappeared around the first bend. I stumbled after them. Wouldn’t be very good in the battle today, but at least I’d gotten a few extra hands into the fray sooner.
An out-of-place whirring sound approached from the west, high above the trees. I gazed up at the sky as I half walked, half ran. A helicopter buzzed aloft, heading toward the heart of the compound. Airborne backup—that made me smile. Behind me, an eruption of gunfire added to the cacophony.
The trees parted. The smoking ruins of R&D lay straight ahead, burning from the inside out. Smoke stung my eyes. Two twisted, bloodied bodies decorated the sidewalk. Gunfire and screams still echoed from the rear, closer to the recruit barracks and training facilities. The helicopter was gone, and I hoped it had at least dumped a couple of capable bodies before flying away.
I dug up some energy reserves and ran. Rounded past R&D and tripped over another body, scraping my palms on the ground as I ate dirt. In times past, I would have used the momentum to tuck into a roll and come up gracefully on my knees. Instead, I belly flopped and looked back.
The girl was probably just eighteen. Her blond hair was streaked crimson, blue eyes wide and unseeing above a gaping throat. Her chest was likewise torn open, one of her arms missing. Strike that, not missing—lying a few feet away. She could have been me four years ago.
People were still screaming. Engines roared as the rest of our backup made entry. I hauled myself up and ran toward the gymnasium a dozen yards away. The doors were gone, and the bulk of the screams were coming from inside.
The interior of the gym was the size of a pro-football arena, divided up into smaller sections designated for specific activities. The largest of these was an obstacle course, and I turned in that direction. Past two more ripped-apart bodies of young trainees. Kids who’d come here for a chance at a meaningful (albeit brief) future and had died gruesome deaths.
Grief for them hardened into anger, and I latched onto it for fuel. It was all I had. Someone darted out of an intersecting corridor and slammed into me. Milo and I went tumbling to the ground. His shirt was coated in blood, but he didn’t seem wounded.
“I think we’re too late,” he said, panting, as we helped each other stand.
“No.”
He followed me into the obstacle arena. We were on a balcony overlooking the course, where our instructors had watched as we failed test after test. Below and halfway across the stretch of space, three battered trainees were high up on the climbing ropes. A single hound stalked them from the ground, swatting at the ropes, seeming not to know how to climb them.
Small favors.
Milo and I pulled our guns at the same time. “Frags,” I said, to which he answered, “A-c’s.”
Good. We opened fire on the hound. Its inhuman howl sliced through my eardrums. Four shots hit home before it dove for cover, but none on its soft underbelly. I bolted for the ladder that led down. The trainees had seen us and were shouting for help. I wanted to scream back to shut up, it’s what we’re doing.
At the ladder, I paused and scanned. A flash of black was moving toward us. I took aim at where I thought it was likely to dart next and waited.
Milo screamed as he pitched past me and to the floor below, a wriggling, snarling creature the size of a cat attached to his back. Skele-kitty, one of the first hybrids I’d seen in the Olsmill lab. Milo hit and rolled. I braced my wrist and aimed. He rolled again, shouting. I squeezed the trigger. The thing’s bald head exploded green gore all over Milo’s back. He looked up, panting, nose bleeding, and gave me a thumbs-up.
“The hound!” I said.
He understood and scrambled for the ladder. The hound blurred toward him. He spun and we both fired, me from above, him from below. Blood gushed. My frags tore chunks of flesh away. It collapsed inches from Milo and lay still.
“Hell yeah,” Milo said.
“Stay up there as long as you can,” I shouted to the trainees. “It’s not safe for you yet!”
Milo stumbled to his feet and started climbing back up. More shouts and gunfire erupted around us, muffled by walls in all directions, intermixed with unidentifiable noises—things breaking, being shoved, shattered, I wasn’t certain. Milo’s head cleared the balcony.
One of the dangling trainees screeched: “Look out!”
How come they never yelled a split second faster and gave us enough reaction time?
A moving body slammed into me, and I pitched forward. Startled by the sudden spur into motion, I lost my grip on the damned gun. I braced for impact only to scream when four daggers pierced my right ankle and kept me from falling. No, I was moving and it wasn’t daggers. Upside down, I thrashed against whatever was holding my leg. Air beat around me, and we were flying above the obstacle course.
Flying?
Shit.
I plucked a knife from one of the sheaths in my belt and slashed at the winged monstrosity hauling me around. Dark-skinned, mottled with patches of black feathers, its wings were long and stretched like a bat’s. Or a gargoyle’s, only I’d never seen gargoyle wings that long—a full ten-foot wingspan—or one that had feathers. Good God, what had Thackery created?
My blade bounced off the thing’s thickly hided feet, and its talons tightened. Blood oozed from the small wounds in my ankle. I was getting light-headed from hanging ass over teakettle. Milo was shouting about not having a clean shot, and I’d lost my gun. The gar-bat-thing zoomed directly toward the far wall, and for one brief moment, I expected it to try to crash straight through. It veered sharply right at the last instant. My head and left shoulder smacked the wall, leaving me reeling.
As it spun me again, I noticed the trainees were off the ropes. Smart move, now that we had airborne enemies. Gar-Bat flew right toward the ropes, heedless of their existence. Or maybe it was having too much fun hauling me around like a bag of flailing potatoes.
I put the blade between my teeth and grabbed the rope with both hands as we passed, holding on with all my might. My palms burned. My ankle lost a little more meat, and I screamed, but Gar-Bat was yanked to a sudden halt. It turned its head and screeched at me—a head-splitting shriek that sounded like tortured baboons. Its face was unidentifiable—hints of different creature-features combined into one squashed maw that was more sea lion– ish than anything else. It was almost absurd.
No, it
It beat its wings, trying to yank me off the rope. I waited for an upswing, the slightest drop in pull. Then I held with my left hand, took the knife with my right, and flung it at the creature’s chest. It struck center. It screamed and let go so suddenly I didn’t have time to grab the rope again. I plummeted to the ground.
There were no mats, just the hard Astroturf surface that covered most of the obstacle course floor. I hit on my back, knocking the wind out of my lungs in a solid, aching
I couldn’t see the Gar-Bat, but I could hear it, still screeching and wailing. On the other side of the climbing wall, maybe. At least I’d wounded it. It gave me a minute to pull myself together. I inhaled hard. Sweet oxygen filled my straining lungs, and I coughed. Inhaled, coughed out, inhaled again. My head started clearing.
I didn’t know of any shortcuts on the obstacle course. My only way out was to go through it to the end. And I was somewhere in the middle, down on the lowest level. During training, this was where each runner climbed the
